A Q&A With Swipe Out Hunger’s Jaime Hansen on how the organization is addressing student hunger through advocacy, partnership and the power of student-led change.

Though 40% of college students nationwide experience food insecurity, Jaime Hansen, executive director of Swipe Out Hunger, calls student hunger a hidden crisis that too often goes ignored. Founded in 2010 as a student-led movement, Swipe Out Hunger has grown into a national nonprofit working with more than 900 campuses to provide meal programs, advocate for policy change and shift the narrative about who today’s college students are.

Q: Campus hunger is often described as a hidden crisis. How widespread is the issue and why do you think it remains so misunderstood?

A: Battling a narrative like “hunger doesn’t exist on my campus” or that it is a rite of passage is a constant for our team. Those beliefs prevent students from pursuing or completing their academic goals and the repercussions are felt across communities.

College student hunger is a pervasive and critical issue on college campuses impacting individuals, families and communities. Roughly 40% of college students—over 6.3 million nationwide—experience food insecurity. The problem has intensified in recent years due to the long-lasting changes due to the pandemic, rising higher education and living costs, drastic political shifts and declining basic needs support systems. Campus food pantries are reporting surging demand, often without adequate funding to meet students’ needs. This challenge directly affects educational outcomes: only 44% of food-insecure students graduate, compared to 68% of their food-secure peers and 41% of students who leave college cite financial pressures.

Even with this research, campus hunger remains largely invisible and misunderstood. Outdated assumptions persist, portraying college as a time of independence and privilege, ignoring that 40% of students are over 25, one in five are parents, and 80% work in addition to attending classes. Shifting the conversation is crucial for all of us. We must acknowledge the reality of today’s students and address structural barriers to ensure all students have the resources to pursue their future academic and economic goals.

Q: How is the increasingly uncertain economic climate affecting college students struggling with hunger?

A: Today’s college students are facing unprecedented challenges to their basic needs. No student should have to choose between food and their future, yet for millions, that is an everyday reality. Even brief disruptions to public benefits like SNAP can determine whether a student graduates or exits school. The recent federal government shutdown threatened SNAP benefits for over a million college students, many of whom are already juggling full-time classes, work and caregiving responsibilities. These disruptions hit hardest for low-income students, student parents, first-generation students, and foster care alumni — students who often rely on SNAP as their primary source of grocery support.

Proposed SNAP budget cuts will only deepen this strain, pushing more of the financial burden onto states to sustain these critical benefits. For our campus partners, this could translate into even higher demand for food access programs, greater reliance on emergency meal support and mounting pressure to stretch already limited resources.

At Swipe Out Hunger, we’re already seeing surges in demand across our campus network. Food pantries are reporting significant increases in visits, and campus partners are scrambling to expand hours, increase inventory, distribute meal vouchers and coordinate emergency aid. For every meal that a food bank provides, SNAP covers nine meals, and thus emergency food assistance, while critical, falls far short of meeting the monthly food needs of SNAP households.

This moment underscores the systemic nature of student hunger: it’s not about personal failure, it’s about a lack of coordinated, sustainable support.

Q: As you look toward the coming years, how is the organization adapting its strategies to protect students from hunger?

A: While our goals have necessarily shifted from more proactive strategies to protecting the existing resources, our approach includes expanding our Swipe Grants to get food directly into students’ hands, and supporting student-centric food pantries and basic needs centers on campuses nationwide.

Through our Hunger Free Campus campaigns and partnerships with state agencies, we’re advocating for policies that expand access to public benefits and create long-term funding for campus food programs. And just this fall, we launched a new Community Engagement Department to build regional coalitions that respond to local student needs with sustainable solutions.

Additionally, we’re preparing to launch a major narrative change campaign. Student hunger is often framed as normal or inevitable — we want to challenge that thinking by elevating student voices and making it clear that food insecurity is not a personal failure. We’re also exploring data partnerships to enable research that informs stronger programs, policies and investments in student success.

Q: How can donors and other partners best support and scale solutions to college food insecurity in a transformative way?

A: Providing support for systemic solutions in addition to emergency needs, flexible funding (general operating support) and multi-year pledges make all the difference to an organization. In addition to these flexible funds, philanthropic and community leaders can leverage their voice and networks to raise awareness about student hunger and engage local representatives, campus administrators and community stakeholders.

Q: What role do students and student leaders play in your organization?

A: Students are at the heart of everything Swipe Out Hunger does. Our organization began as a student-led movement at UCLA in 2010 with the creation of the first “Swipe Drive”— a simple idea that allowed students to donate unused meal credits to peers facing food insecurity. What started as a grassroots project has grown into a national movement, but the principle remains the same: there should be nothing about students without students. College students experience hunger firsthand, and their insights, leadership, and creativity are essential to designing effective solutions.

Student engagement, training, and strategic guidance informs and leads Swipe’s work. By centering student voices, Swipe Out Hunger ensures that programs, communications, and advocacy efforts reflect lived experiences. In doing so, we are not just providing meals — we are reshaping the story of who college is for, what success requires and what justice in education looks like.

Q: What does a truly hunger-free campus look like to you, and what will it take to achieve that vision?

A: A truly hunger-free campus is one where every student has reliable access to nutritious food without barriers and where resources are part of campus culture and infrastructure. This will look like campuses having dedicated budgets for food access programs, SNAP and other public benefits redesigned to be accessible to college students, as well as a cultural shift to understanding the long-term individual and economic impact higher education completion will bring to our communities.

Achieving this vision requires a combination of immediate and long-term solutions. In the near future, we must meet students’ urgent food needs, expand SNAP access and other federal/state benefits, secure campus budgets for ongoing food programs and provide stable funding and policy frameworks for sustainable solutions.